Good
shoppers use coupons to save money. Extreme couponers have something a
bit more in mind whenever they scour their Sunday circulars: they want
stuff for free. That's right: Free, as in zilch, zip and zero dollar.

With a bit of knowledge and a lot of planning, the practitioner of "extreme
couponing" can get a lot of stuff for free (or practically free).
Billy Baker of The Boston Globe has the fascinating story of the couponing
craze:

Spencer’s approach requires significant planning and effort,
a willingness to stand up to hostile cashiers, and, some say, a lack
of shame. But the reward she offers is too good for her thousands of
devotees to pass up.

The goal is not simply a good deal, she says. “The goal is
free.’’

On that seminal Sunday last month, a combination of factors collided
to bring an entirely new pack of extreme couponers to the scene at once,
unable to resist that first taste of “free.’’ After
the Great Toilet Paper Rush, nothing would be the same.

“It was the day that sent a seismic wave through coupondom,’’
said Melanie Feehan, a veteran extreme couponer who arrived at a Rite
Aid near her home in Plymouth shortly after it opened, only to discover
the toilet paper had been cleared from the shelves by a man who bragged
to a clerk that he had already emptied three other Rite Aids that morning.

“When a newbie couponer is birthed they are very much like
baby vampires,’’ Feehan wrote on her popular blog, The Coupon
Goddess. “They go on a couponing rampage that wreaks havoc at
every store they descend upon . . . Carnage.’’

For the record, coupons do not say "one per customer" get real. Have you people seen a coupon? Most stores will let you have as many coupons as you want as long as you have as many items to go with the coupons.